Chocolate Chocolate Chip Zucchini Cake (Loaf)

The "pinspiration"...um, yes, please!

As you know my foray into home farming has given me a myriad of zucchini (see below) and what can a girl make with a buhzillion delicious green gourds? Sure, I could fry up some zucchini slices, like a good Italian girl...perhaps make a nice lasagna or something of that nature...but that's not my style. I'm all about the sweet...so when I saw the pin above I knew the loaf and I were meant to be...

Peekaboo!

Look at me, getting all artsy with the zucks!

The pin sent me to the Family Kitchen blog, and while I was reading it, I kept being hit with words like MOIST and DENSE...my mouth started watering. All my life I've searched for a good loaf that is MOIST and DENSE. Two things that sometimes are difficult to combine. And now I can toss some zucchini in, make it "healthy" and feel good about plowing through a loaf on my own....BUT WAIT, could it be? This recipe makes MORE THAN ONE LOAF???? GET OUTTA TOWN!!!!! This is the best find in the universe. This blogger is pure genius.

So I read the list of ingredients, compiled them and pondered...should I modify? I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY wanted to. I'm not a huge fan of chocolate chips/nuts/raisins in my loaves. Really. Some people may be aghast, but it is so. I like to bite into my MOIST, DENSE loaf slice without the hindrance of having my teeth gnashing on something hard, or chewy for that matter. Give me a plain ol' piece of sweet loaf and I'll be happy as a clam. So, I was going to leave those stinkin' chocolate chips out of the mix, but I wondered if they added to the sweet flavour of the "bread/cake", so I wanted to keep the recipe intact...this time...(For recipe, click HERE)

As I was mixing all of the ingredients, I was getting super excited about trying these things out. The smell was fantastic. I popped them into my oven and waited. The smell of the house was overwhelming...it took all the willpower I could muster to keep myself from opening and closing the oven door a million times just to catch another waft.

 

They're baking....EEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!

Ding! The timer went off. I rushed to the oven, opened the door and slid them onto the cooling rack. Patience, so they tell me, is a virtue...one that I'm in short supply of (I have two kids, you know...), but I wanted to wait until those loafs were ripe for the pickin'. I didn't want to risk the flavour at all by cutting and tasting it too early. The minutes passed like hours...maybe even days...but finally they were cool enough that I could justify slicing through loaf number 1. I lifted the piece to my mouth....

and.....??????

...it was dry, DENSE (I'll give it that...)and almost flavourless...sorry for the build-up kids. I was just as devastated as you are now. Imagine...waiting all that time (10 minutes of prep, one hour of baking and 10 minutes of cooling)...all for naught. And of course, now I'm stuck with two freakin' loaves of this garbage. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I threw it in the freezer and maybe one day, when I'm chocolate deprived, I may venture into the deep freeze and thaw it out. Most likely, however, I'll do my annual freezer clean-out (yes, I'm aware that I should be doing it seasonally, but if you haven't discovered yet, I'm stinkin' lazy, okay????), I'll just toss it out with the rest of the forgotten left-overs.

Now to be fair, I like to give a recipe more than one chance. There are many things that could be to blame for this epic recipe fail...Perhaps I overmixed, or undermixed...maybe I overcooked (although I'm the undercooker of the universe)... maybe the heat in my oven was too much for the poor loaves to bare... I perused the blog to see if anyone else had encountered the same issues as me, but didn't really find anything that matched. So perhaps it was something on my side...? I'll give it another go. Definitely with some modifications - no chocolate chips. Anyone up for some chocolate loaves if the second go is a bust...?? Anyone...? Bueller...?

Shout Out:

Perhaps you should give it a try. Let me know if you get better results!  Family Kitchen

Hardwood Floor Cleaner

My "Pinspiration"



With two kids under 5, it's extremely difficult to keep the house clean, most days (okay, it's partly my laziness, too...but it's nice to have a little bit of an excuse, right?) Each week, however, I like to do a proper clean, which includes dusting, cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming the carpets and washing the floors. Of course, 2 seconds after the house has it's thorough clean, it's back to its state of disarray (my kids have NO respect for my cleaning abilities...), but at least it's nice to know that underneath all of the toys and junk, there's a clean base. My preferred method of washing the floors has been the H2O Mop. My father (obsessed with infomercials) showed up one day and presented me with this mop and I've used it ever since (sometimes it pays to watch late night TV, I guess).

Anyway, when we moved to our "new" house a year ago, the hardwood was a darker shade than what I was used to, and my beloved H2O mop was leaving watermarks everywhere. So even after a clean, the floors just never looked right. And now that summer has rolled around, bare feet are rampant, and those bare feet pick up all kinds of goop, sand, dirt and oil and leave tracks all over my hardwood.

It's a little hard to see, but the floor is grimey...trust me.



I was just losing patience and obviously needed to find a new method to get my floors sparkling again. When I saw the pin above, I was certainly curious to see if this would work on my hardwood. When the kids were at the in-laws, I figured it was the perfect opportunity to give it a try.

The pin took me to a site that gave suggestions on how to clean all kinds of floors (vinyl, ceramic, etc.), but I was only interested in the hardwood instructions....So, I put all my ingredients together and started.

Doesn't look like much, and it really isn't. It's a bucket, a microfiber cloth, two teabags and a kettle of hot water. I just threw the boiling hot water into the bucket with the bags o' tea and let it steep for 5ish minutes. I actually let it steep for a little longer because I was still cleaning other parts of the house, but it couldn't have been much longer than 10 minutes. The water was still BOILING, so I mixed in some cool tap water (to make it bearable to put my hands in) and got to work. The unfortunate part of this exercise is actually getting down on your hands and knees to wash the floors (which is a pain in the ...knees, I guess), but it didn't take long. I waited until all the floors were dried, took a look and was quite pleased with the result.

Of course, as soon as the kids came home, the sand, oil and disgustingness all returned...but it looked good for a couple of hours anyway!

Shout Out:

DIY Network for all their tips on floor cleaning!

Spool Holder

What? No funky "pinspiration" photos? Nope, ladies and gentlemen....this is my first attempt at actually creating something without Pinterest's influence. (Sound of record scratching at the grade eight dance and everyone staring at you ). Shocking, I know...Trust me!

What set off this mild bout of creativity was the fact that my "craft station" (yes world, if you can believe it, I have an actual craft station in my basement - which more often than not is used as an art table for my kids) is a human hellpit of despair (see for yourself!)

Look away before the mess takes over your world too!!!!!

Obviously I'm in desperate need of organization (in my whole life, of course, but let's start off at the craft table, okay? This is just one post...) So where do I start? Clearly a "normal" human being would start off with any of the VISIBLE parts of this abomination...but NOT ME...that would be too easy. I'm gonna start with drawer number 2 (NOT EVEN DRAWER NUMBER 1, PEOPLE!!) cuz that's how I roll... Drawer number 2 is my "SEWING" drawer. One that has my special scissors, my sewing machine accessories and last, but not least, my thread spools and bobbins. Why would I start here, you ask? Well, because I'm on the verge of master sewery (yes, that's my own word. Feel free to tell your friends...), I need my stuff readily accessible, because when the sewing mood strikes, I need to be able to grab a matching spool and bobbin asap and get my sewing machine locked and loaded. You hear me?? Anyway, my "sewing" drawer looks a lot like the aforementioned explosion, but nicely tucked away in a drawer so no one can see (because they're probably still in shock while perusing my hoarding (...er...craft) table...)

So how am I going to organize my stuff, you ask? Good question. I'm gonna put them all together in one organized place and mount them for immediate accessibility. How am I going to do that? Let me tell you...1) Get a piece of wood - small enough because I only have a drawer full of thread spools and bobbins (I'm not Martha freakin' Stewart, if it's not already obvious enough). 2) Find some screws that a thread spool will fit on. 3) Screw them into the piece of wood. 4) Put thread spools on screws 4) Done-zo.

Seems pretty straight forward, right? Well...without giving the matter much thought, I found some screws that a thread spool would fit on, and started on my way...1 screw in, 2 screws in, 9 screws in...but wait a sec...didn't I need to hold something else on this thing. Oh right...a bobbin...let me try that bobbin on one of these ...^%$&!!!!! It doesn't fit (OF COURSE)...unscrew the few million (okay, I'm exaggerating a bit...) screws that I'd already put in and find something that a bobbin will fit on. Okay...Let's try this again. Top row - screws, Second row - finishing nails, Third row - screws, Fourth row - finishing nails. Et voila! Spool Holder for me! YAY!!!

Beauty! (this piece of wood is actually a small bamboo cutting board from Dollarama! And the screws and nails I already had at home. Total cost for project - $1!)

Le piece de resistance!

So, of course, I'm all proud of myself, as you can imagine. I have this amazingly brilliant creation that I came up with ALL BY MYSELF!!!, and what happens? I go onto Pinterest and find this...

Damn you, Pinterest...! And of course, it's WAAAAAY cooler and sexier than I could've ever come up with on my own. Like, c'mon man, it's framed for crying out loud!

And to make things worse, I mounted this sucker in my "craft area" and two seconds later, it fell off the wall, spools and bobbins everywhere.

What lesson did I learn here? No matter how genius you think you are, someone's already thought of it...and it's always better too. Ugh!

Shout out:

Grey Luster Girl: damn you and your craftiness!

Stovetop Macaroni and Cheese

Yummy Pinspiration

There are two kinds of people in this world...the ones who like their macaroni and cheese dry and the ones who like their mac and cheese soupy. I fall into the "SOUPY" category, much to the chagrin of my husband who supports the dry team...GROSS! Of course, when I stumbled on the photo above on Pinterest, I most certainly thought to myself...that is some SOUPY mac and cheese (maybe even too soupy for me...)...BUT, that didn't stop me from trying it out!

My family is a hard core macaroni and cheese family. My kids are pasta fanatics. We have boxed KD, boxed PC white cheddar, no name mac and cheese, Annie's Bunny Pasta, and I try my best to make this as healthy as possible for them (since we eat it SO OFTEN - My Italian family is vomiting as we speak...!). Most times I puree either butternut squash or sweet potato into the "orange" variety, and some chick peas or white beans into the white cheddar variety, but I still know about all the preservatives in that deadly (read: amazingly tasty, of course) dried cheese packet. So, often I try to make my own "version" of the boxed stuff. I've tried so many different kinds of baked mac and cheese I've lost count. Each time, however, it's SO DRY not an ounce of soupy cheese sauce anywhere to be found. Didn't I put a carton of milk and a brick of cheese in this stinkin' recipe????? Where'd you go?????????

That's why I've given up and tried to work with the stove top variety (hence photo above).

When I looked at this recipe (click here), I couldn't believe my eyes. The ingredients were mind blowing. I was NOT abiding by any sort of diet eating this masterpiece, I can tell you that much...and when I made the mistake of actually looking at the caloric content of one serving (and who actually eats one serving???) my brain actually exited my head...BUT...you know that when it's bad for you, it tastes SO GOOOOOOD, right?

Very true.

I made this as a blastball dinner (which means that my son and his dad/coach have to get the eff outta the house asap so dinner better be on the table and eaten in a flash or they're gonna be late to play the mini version of t-ball) and it was super quick to make (A MUST on blastball night) and eaten quickly by all! Mision cumplida! (yes, my son used to be a HUGE Diego fan). One thing I did notice, however, was that my pasta was not as soupy as pictured on the actual recipe, but this time...that was fine by me.

Delicioso! YUM YUM YUM!!!!

Dinner is served!

If, however, you have a super duper soupy baked macaroni and cheese recipe, I'd love to try it, too!



Shout out

Recipe for Creamy Stovetop Mac & Cheese provided by America's Test Kitchen (but found HERE)